Exoneration and Final Tragedy

It really hits deeply actually seen the crime scene photo It made me just very, very angry what had been done. to Angie The day that Angie was found my whole system shut down. everythingverything just shut down. Who would do that to Angie One of our friends, the accusations were flying. They were running and gun at for anybody. You're handcuffed? Yeah, they treated me like I was part of this nasty crime. They were convinced that you were there. Yeah. These people robbed my life for twenty years for something I never did. All they kept saying is he confessed, Carol, He confess I said, what is What going on here? I went to the streets searching for her killer. She was advocating for justice. She was a force to be wreckoned with. She was not gonna let it go. She begged me to give it a deeper look. But potentially have a break on this? Oh my gosh Where're going go solve murder We're going to solve twenty five year over Years lost, liivves shattered. A mother fights to uncover the truth I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline Here's Keith Morrison with True confession Cllow the Snake River. It glides wide and placid past the gleaming white Mormon temple and then twists and tumbles over rocks and weirs through the town of Idaho Falls Twists and tumbles like this most improbable tale One that began right here Where are your kids? Long before the state of Idaho was associated with notorious names like Laurie Vallo or Chad Dayill or. Ryan Coberger. Ryan is. We thought we knew the story we're about to tell Perhaps you think you know it too But That old cliche is a Ciche for a reason Truth is often stranger than fiction. As you will see I don't think anybody saw this coming I don't think that you could have imagined this in a million years But here at the river is where it first went wrong Among a group of young men and women who'd formed what felt to them like a kind of family. It was an almost every night thing during the summertime that we would go down there, hang out with friends. Me girls A daily gathering of the ones who didn't quite fit anywhere else We werere a bunch of wild kids, young adults just having fun trying to live our lives. One of their number had just left a family nest, set out on her own. She was a special one Because of a kind of no nonsense charisma she seemed to carry around with her Her name was Angie. She was a personality That's for sure. You didn't want to cross Angie. and she wrestled me down. I thought she was gonna put me in the river R. She was happy Teen year old Angie Dodge This is her brother, Brent and her mother Carol She grew up in a household with three brothers So she wrestled with them and Her friends always knew her that Nobody got in her face because she would take care of you. She was good sizeed too. I mean was She was a we pqu thing. She was five, eleven, and she was strong Strong and Grown up enough in nineteen ninety six to move across town from the family home to her own apartment. And we gave each other a hug. she walked towards her car Achieved Ricas. It says I love you And I did the same And it was like she's in slow motion And she just drifted up the street and uh Last time I saw her It all seems Surreal now that happened all these years later It was the morning of june thirteenth, nineteen ninety six Bill Squres was a rookie cop when he got the call to go to a house in a residential neighborhood here on I Street I knowo falls So I just barely got out of training and You know, working as a solo police officer myself when that call came out He made his way upstairs to a tiny second floor apartment What did you see inside that apartment what appeared to be, unfortunately a murdered young lady That was the first homicide that I'd ever been exposed to The victim was, of course Angie Dodge. Keep a log, said a senior officer That's what Squires did He kept track of everyone who went in and out standard procedure. Pratt was a veteran cop by then It was mostost herrific scene that I had ever worked you know in that fifteen years of my career at that point What had been done to that young woman? while she was nearly decapitated Man. What else do you remember finding on around her Well, there was a lot of blood spatter on the walls, the carpet, the bedding around her A lot of other injuries on her body that had been inflicted by a sharp instrument Near the bed was a stuffed teddy bear. Soaked in blood On the dead girl's stomach was blloody handprint Could you get a print off that a usable print? We tried In that time, we were not capable of doing that But the killer had left critical verifiable DNA evidence on the victim's body a lot of biological materials that had been left behind indicating there hadd been a sexual assault. At the time, DNA was quite new. It was. and that's why we were focused so hard on collecting all of those biologicals. This moment, this place. print itself on the detectives for life. Angie's family called out to the police department. beyond imagining. So they brought in some pictures. Is this your sister pictures of the crime scene How's that to look at It's just horrifying My whole system shut down, my emotional, everything just shut down While the CSIs went about their work, homicide detectives looked for the murder weapon. hadad to be a knife of some sort but they couldn't find it. They determined There is no forced entry The killer left the exterior door ajar. And when they looked at the body, it seemed to them almost posed What did that say to you? Yeah, I mean it was a passionate crime. It was somebody who wanted to humiliate her. Former detectives Ken Brown and Jared Furran There is well over fourteen different wounds It was that horrific. The detectives had a hunch in the start There had been powerful emotions at play here Angie had lived in the apartment only a matter of weeks She'd been dating a young man for about the same length of time You checked him out? Yes. D andA I didn't match. D andA didn't match They learned that some of Angie's friends had gone to see her before the murder but they left shortly before one AM checked out DNA didn't match Well, detectives began casting a wider net focusing on interviews Crime scene investigator Jeff Pratt was increasingly sure It was DNA that would take the lead role in finding the killer I really believe that that was going to be the solving factor from the very beginning Was that a recommendation you were able to make to the lead investigators in the case I made that suggestion. They were already kind of on task on some other things U so it didn't they didn't really follow that. And like you say, DNA was relatively new Oh It wasn't well received. What was that like for you Well, it's it's kind of like trying to sell something that's never been, you know, they've not seen it before. It was hard I believed in it. I knew that that was going to be instrumental and big, you know, a big issue I couldn't convince everybody, you know, initially. which was it would turn out a great pity And none of them had a clue, of course, how could they that the mystery begun here would be unlike any other in this town that the crime committed against Angie Dodge would spread its damage like a contagion Thus, a decades long obsession took over carars every waking minute. to find the man who killed Angie. But also to demand a particular sort of justice which would turn out to be the most improbable demand of all I got called in by the prosecutor and, you know, Carol, you have to stop. I wouldn't stop Carald Dodge She lost her mind After her daughter, Angie was raped and murdered that awful summer of nineteen ninety six, that was Carol's own assessment. And why would anyone doubt it Certainly not her son, Angie's brother, Brent I remember going down to the mortuary and we had to choose a casket for her Mom laid on the casket and said You're not burying my baby in this It was beyond what you can Imagine and makeu . It was tough too for Angie's friends, those who hung around down by the Snake River likeike Jeremy Sargust, known as Jare She was definitely a part of the girls that came down to the river every day or you know, multiple times a week at least What was she like She was a personality. That's for sure. We didn't want to cross Angie Yeah, she has a personality. She's a social butterfly. Yeah She'd been bullied through school a little bit because of her size. Yeah, she's tall. Yeah. At that point, and I think she was getting comfortable with herself Among those river kids, Angie Dodge was a force, smart, fun loving respected by her friends Angie graduated high school early at seventeen with honors. then turned eighteen and started college and had a new job at a beauty salon She was a good friend to people. Tesy Osborne was a friend She was a very nice person and very responsible. Everybody loved her Russ Baldwin was also a river regular She had a big, bright, beautiful character. You just knew who she was. As was George Pauy's It was wild that somebody we knew and murdered Police were a constant presence at the river. In those first days and weeks after the murder Jair was terrified I was terrified. Our everyday lives are suddenly scrutinized and they're asking, whereere were you six days ago? And I was like,, I really don't remember For months, it seemed police got nowhere It drove Carol Dodge even more mad Everybody went on with their lives except M. I drove to the police department Every day that they were open. You became a fixture in there. I did. Nobody could stop me from talking to those detectives I didn't bother to say, could I talk to so and so I just walked right back in their office. I got called in by the prosecutor and, you know, Carool, you have to stop and I wouldn't stop Finally, about six months after the murder We had information that one of the people that we had interviewed at this case and had given an alibi at the river was arrested in Eiley, Nevada for very brutal rape and cutting a young woman with a knife Kind of the same pattern, yes His name Benjamin Hobbs, another of the River kids As you see here, Hobbs even carried flowers behind Angie's casket at her funeral So as one detective traveled to Nevada to confront Hobbses, others began calling in Hobbs as friends, including the kids from the river. T Chris. Now for videotaped interviews Why do you think you're down here Honestly, I have no idea. One of whom was a twenty year old named Christopher Tack Tap said he would like to help, but he said he You didn't know anything about Auntie's murder. If I did anything though about this I would say I do not know That's how the shoot. And having made his statement, Christopher Tapp went home in the clear apparently A couple of days later, the detectives asked him to come downtown again. I told him, I says, What are you doing? I says, This is a murder case. This is Tap's mother, Vera. She understood what he apparently did not, that her son was quite possibly talking himself into very big trouble. He says, Mom, I don't have anything to hide and I want to tell him that I don't know anything All I know is I did not kill An's Doug. four hundred miles away in Nevada en Hobbs said he didn't kill Angie either, and he didn't know who did. And then he asked the question Was she raped and then she just killed? C was she raped? I don't know. That's why I'm asking you, 'causeuse if she was, my DNA will prove my innocence right there. They took blood samples from both Hobbs and Tap. And then they pulled Tap in again for more questions. Nine times, a total of twenty hours of questions They polygraphed him repeatedly And Eventually it came out A confession of sorts Tap admitted he was in Angie's apartment with Ben Hobes when Hobes did it killed Angie And with that, Balites were convinced they had their killers But sometime after all those interrogations, the DNA tests were done and results came back. And the semen found on Angie's body did not belong to Ben Hobbs Yeah Chris Tax. mon through your head When the DNA results came back and it showed that the attacker was not Ben Hobbs. If you're going to nail it down to one word, it's frustration The detectives Bown and Furma Weere as sure as could be that Tap knew more than he was saying, more than even his confession So they kept him in jail and developed a theory to account for those negative DNA results. What about Jeremy? There had to be a third attacker with hbs and tap And it was that third man who left the DNA. So they worked to tap some more What do you know Taap fingered another buddy who was also a friend of Angie's We think end up tonight I got it from Jer. Ja? Oh you've met him. Jeremy Sargis I remember waking up on my birthday, the police were there to arrest me, pulled me out of bed, cuffed me, dragged me downtown told me I was under arrest for accessory to the murder of Angie Dodge. What was that like That was one of the scariest things I've ever been through. Youourre handcuffed I'm handcuffed. Yeah, they took me downtwn and treated me like I was Part of this Nasty crime. Meanwhile The police went hard at the other river kids. Maybe Jeremy was the third man Yeah Maybe it was one of the others, like George P's They flat out told me I was lying to them and I was protecting my friends. I was terrified because none of us were violent. And I thought I was next. I thought that my girlfriend at the time was next Plain and simple every single day. I was afraid that there was going to be a policeman show up to my work and arrest me for this. Russ Baldwin was on the list too, but I was in jail And That's how that went. And they were like, what? And I'm like, yeah, I was in jail when this happened Strange, but true Records showed Baldman had been picked up on a warrant for failure to appear in court for In all seriousness, fishing without a license at seven twenty nine PM the evening before Angie Dodge's murder Records said he wasn't released from jail until five days after the murder But the police weren't so sure I mean, they even went as far as to demand DNA. because I could have broken out Murdered Angie Donge I then broke back in the DDI was not Baldmans and he was cleared. Who was that dird man Police just couldn't put it down. O had they already Officer Furman tell you that Chris Tapp and said about you. Chris has placed you there It was the middle of winter in Idaho Angie Dodge had been dead seven months And they arrested Jeremy Sargis charged him as an accessory to murder So Jeremy cooled his heels in jail Knowing full well who put him there? M got a from J. Officer Firman tell you that Chris Tapp I said about you. And Chris has placed you there He's just trying to tell me that he knew We did this mister Tapp stated that Jeremy Sargis was one of the individuals that actually held her arms down, right during the homicide itself Wh would like to hear that? car baking. is You thought Chris was your friend. You don't lie about something like that, I mean It was hard to deal with. But it turned out that Jeremy had something going for him that Chris Tab did not. An aggressive attorney. What advice did your attorney give you All you can say under the advice of your attorney, you invoke your Fifth Amendment rights. And without more evidence than just Chris Taap say so, prosecutors were forced to drop the charges against Jerem M The fact of matter was, if you didn't talk to them, they couldn't prove anything Brett How long were you actually in jail Th just two days. Tw days of bitterness betrayed by a friend How'd you feel about your old friend Chris Tapp Oh, I hated him I hated him The hell are you thinking, man? Meantime, police and prosecutors kept talking to Chris Tapp Because unlike Jeremy, he kept talking to them Then it happened Sometime during those many hours of interviews Chris Taap added to his confession something very disturbing. He didn't just watch Ben Hobbs do it. He played a role in Angie's rappe And remember that blood soaked teddy bear police found near the bed told police that Ben Hobbs held that over Angie's face as he Cubs Slit her throat More persons of interest were brought in, more DNA tests were done. That rookie cop who worked the crime scene kept up on the case by keeping his ears open around the station house I think every time They did a DNA sample that didn't match Keith. I think it was a punch in the gut every time Ben Hobbses already behind bars in Nevada on different rape charges, and Not enough evidence to charge him or some mysterious third man Prosecutors in Idaho decided it was time to move on what they had, which was Chris Tab's confession They called a press conference to announce they were charging Tap with first degree murder, rape, and use of a deadly weapon. Was there a collective sigh of relief when Chris Tapp was arrested? I can only speak for myself, but I looked at it as, okay, well, we've got one of the suspects now in custody. Now we just need to find out the rest of the story so we can close the case completely. Oh if only When Chris Napp went on trial in nineteen ninety eight Carol Dodge was convinced he absolutely played a role in the rape and murder of her daughter it was finally looking. Somebody in the eye somebody looking at somebody What I thought was a devil. who had taken my daughter's life The anger surged within me She watched him in court. Y eyes full of venom as she listened to the evidence against him That is, his own confession is many confessions which the defense tried unsuccessfully to suppress Tap's own words convinced Carol he was guilty But if that wasn't enough for the jury Then one more witness would do it A woman you've already met What did they tell you what would happen if you refused? I was gonna let a killer walk free. I gotta do what's right Destiny, Osborne Aie's friend and Chris's friend too T testify that she heard Chris Taap confess to the crime partarty Destiny said she wanted to do the right thing Eespecially since she knew both Angie and Angie's mother, Carol She was happy you testified Well, I mean, yeah, ' she felt it gave her some answers Yes, answers Angie's mother had been desperate for for so many months What did you want to have Don't do it They had discussed the death penalty, but I didn't believe in the death penalty. No human being on this Human Eth has the right to take another person's life. Even the person who murdered your dught? Absolutely not But she was pleased when Chris Taap was found guilty and sent off to state prison for forty years exxcept That couldn't be the end of it. Taps so called third accomplice, the owner of that DNA. was still out there So DNA, Carol felt sure had to be the key. But the police couldn't seem to find the person. And so Carol decided she would. This was your search now. Find the person who was the owner of that DNA Exactly. Because they could tell the story. They're the only one. That person is the one that's going to tell the story. It was a partial victory, some justice for Angie Dodge and her mother Carol Chris Taap was in prison His alleged accomplice Ben Hobes, was behind bars in Nevada for a different crime. though he was never charged with Angie's murder But of course, it wasn't over The Idaho Falls Police made it known they were still searching for that third man The one who left his DNA on Angie's body. And something like a public guessing game ensued This man or this one? Or was it this man, George Paes It seemed like the whole town suspected him Just because Chris was his friend I would have Patrons of my family's restaurant walk in the door and walk straight up to me and ask me if I was a murdere What do he say? No No I didn't murder that that girl But if Tap's friends thought they were being tortured Angie's mom, Carol, was living in her own personal hell That's when I went to the streets and I literally put sixty thousand miles on my truck seearching for her killer. I distributed like twelve hundred flowers through the summer. Did you go to scary places dangerous places Yes I remember going to place and the lady said, you know, you need to leave before somebody hurts you Yet she kept doing it for years, taking incredible risks I had a gun put to my head one night And during those nights, Carool often ended up parked outside the apartment where Angie was murdered. And I would just stare at that house and stare at the windows And Try and figure out How scared she must have been She also endlessly is Is talkaled the right word? Those friends of Chris Tapp, like Jeremy Sargis. There was times I would be working look up and there she is. She'd been watching me for a while. She was relentless. And by that time, I think Firman had her pretty convinced We had something to do with it That's Detective Jared Furrman, of course. Carol prodded him. Proded them, the whole department insisting they keep searching for the killer moreore than a decade. She spent her days and nights reading police reports practically memorizing them I don't sleep when I get up and I just go Part of this don't I understand In one of those reports, Carol found a phrase which, the more she read it sounded Out of place in a DNA world. It was about pubic hairs which in addition to the semen, had been found on Angie's body It was written in this lab report that it's similar are same as the victim And I said to myself, it's either Angie's or it's Angie's It can't be an either or Then Carol remembered reading an article about an internationally known DNA expert who just so happened to live and work right in Idaho This is the expert Dr. Greg Hamppekian A fruit fly genetic system Boiseise State University. But Dr. Ham Pikian's work is not all done in the classroom. In fact His own path changed years ago When he was asked to test some DNA and got an innocent man freed from a george of prison And just like that, the doctor found a new collie, founder and director of Idaho's Innocence Project Secrets can be kept, I guess you know, science reveals those secrets Carol called this Dr. Hamppeiia and discovered that his innocence project had just taken on the case of Christopher Taap. at which he might have been forgiven for hanging up the phone. But she didn't Quite the reverse Her words to me, I'll never forget were I just want to know what happened to my daughter And you know, it still brings the hair up on the back of my neck. The curiosity of her surprise you. The knowledge surprised me. She's turned all of that love and devotion for her daughter into a very careful record of this case Carol was well on her way to becoming an expert in her own right in forensic science So she read that report to him. The one that said the pubic hairs found on Angie looked similar to or the same as the victim's. He goes, well, they're either herers or they're not Just as you thought. He said, Well, where are the hairs I said, I assume that there's still in evidence. So she called the Idaho Falls Police Department, which found the hairs in an envelope in the evidence room. And once DNA tests were run on those hairs and compared with the semen and all the other materials from the crime scene Dr. Hamppeikian concluded this. There was no evidence whatsoever that anyone was inside Angie's apartment Besides Angie and the mystery man who killed her It's all one person who did this in terms of the DNA. Dr. Hamppiian believed police were mistaken. There was one killer, not three, like the police thought I to imagine that there is this group of criminals know about DNA and are so careful What did they do? They planted somebody else's semen and pubic hair and then cleaned up all their own DNA That remarkable news could mean only one thing. acccording to the Idaho Innizence Project, Chris Taap's confession was false. idn't do it No matter what the police thought, he wasn't even there The news came down on Carol Dodgge's head likeike a hammer For thirteen years, they had me convinced the Chris tab was there. All they kept saying is he confessed, Carol He confessed, and I was extremely angry when they have DNA, not once, but twice that blogs to the same person and it's not Chris Tapp Something's wrong. Next step Watch those Krist Tap confession tapes for herself. There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV. The DNA convinced Carol Dodge There could be no doubt that Chris Tapp was nowhere near her daughter's bedroom the night Angie was killed he needed to be out of prison But the question remained Why would he confess So what you do I met with the chief. and I asked for copies of all of the videotapes Those videotapes, including the ones in which Chris Tap had confessed to taking part in the murder Now dozen years after the murder of her daughter Cara watched every single minute of those hours and hours of videotapes Interviews with all those men who'd been interrogated L I told you we're just going in circles. Well, I know that's why I think this is Starting with Ben Hobbs Man, he was adamant that he said, I did not kill Angie Dodge Please don't be nervous. I'm not m to be down here. Next, she watched the police interview Jeremy Sargis. Chris tap it implicated I mean, literally I said, what is going on here. Their strategy was that they were trying to get each one of these guys roll roll on the other one And Ben and Jeremy werere much smarter and just basically you know, get play their game What she saw amazed her As did what she learned The the man interrogating Chris Tapp then detective Jared Furrman had been a school resource officer well known to a young Chris Tat I trust you and hopefully you trust me. Okay. Firman kept telling Chris, Just trust me, Chris. You got toa trust me You know, we go way back, Chris And I think that he was taught to respect adults.. And he was a follower She watched as Chris told Furam and he knew nothing about Angie's murder And then she watched the detectives get tapped to imagine himself as an active participant. T example, hypothetically, Chris, you were there, o Hypothetically, Chris, how do you think it happened? And I remember Chris saying You mean like a TV show Next, she saw police administering polygraph after polygraph and almost always with the same result. They would tell him he was deceptive. But perhaps what troubled Carol most was seeing how confused Tap was Even ten days after his first interviews He still seemed not to know what house Angie lived in. And she like li was on corner a wast It was a p fly For a guy who'd taken part in a murder, Tap also seemed not to know much about the layout of Angie's apartment So detective Brown suggested This helpful memory Aid. I you trying dize sometimes it need can dry out They seemed to be coaching him. He still couldn't do it And then They showed him where the murder happened. bathroom that here with and bedroom project back here It was more Carol was stunned to see that police had shown taap photos of the crime scene I want you to tell us That's how you remembered it That's how you don't remember it. Theybe's just gonna dog some memories for you, and we'll gonna go from there Finally Remember that the police theory of the crime after DNA didn't match Tap or Hobbs was that Three people committed the murder together The detectives spent hours literally trying to drag the name of that third man out of tap. And when Carol saw the tape You watch it. the name nothing comes to my head aer. It wasn't as Winkkelesson, Mackleton. first times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV By the time you had gone through all of those tapes, what did you think about t How did they do this to me? How have they managed to convince and keep someone in prison for all these years. And it's a possibility it's not there. So then Carol made the most remarkable decision She would do everything in her power to free the man convicted of killing her own daughter Impossible. Of course, Taapin lost all his appeals it was over for him And the detective who put him behind bars was now more powerful than ever, was mayayor of Idaho Falls, and absolutely certain that Chris Tapp was as guilty as sin What's it like to know that Carol is now? Dly campaigning for his release belieelves an innocent man to. For years after the murder, finding Angie's killer was Carol's reason for living throughrough three heart attacks, the death of her estranged husband often on battles with the Idaho Falls pololice And then that fight became way more complicated because Dive, Jared Firman We soon elected mayayor of the city And as mayor, Jared Furrman still seemed to be caught up in the Angie Dodge case as Jeremy Sargis and his mother discovered. My momom worked at City Hall and He wasn't fond to her and she wasn't fond to him. Well, he still believed you're guilty. And he did. and he wouldn' make sure and tell her that too. Your son's gotten away with murder Yeah We know he's done something Mayor Furrman and Detective Captain Ken Brown were so sure the doubters are wrong that Back in twenty twelve, they were more than happy to sit with us and answer whatever questions we had And here the mayor told us he absolutely knew that Chris Tapp was guilty. knew because it was he for aan who took Tap to the crime scene, where he But the doubters saw how Tap behaved in the bedroom where Angie Dodge was murdered He took us into the bedroom and relived. That night And you could see it on his face. He was reliving it Of course, the critics wouldn't be able to see that because it was one of the only times during the investigation when the police did not videotape Chris Taax I have no doubts in my mind that Chris Taap is a part homicide is But you can't a work anything thing though But you can't People do confess to things they didn't do. We know that, but when people confess to crimes that they don't do, they don't know the minute details of that case. And Chris knew minute details of that case. He of course claims that he knows them because he was fed them We would politely disagree with that. Is it possible, at least that there was some suggestion involved in these things before he actually said them? that he heard in the questions he was being asked, some hint of what the answer might be Hypothetical has it worked. For us to sit and says there's absolutely no possibility anything anything could have happened. You know, we can't, we can't say things like that. We can say that we have reviewed those tapes over and over. We had a jury who reviewed those tapes. For two guys interviewed this person and found that in the first interview, the second interview, the third interview, the fourth interview, the fifth interview He lied like a sidewalk Then you finally get to the seventh inter ofview and that's the gospel truth. Well, not no Absolutely, absolutely not. During each of the interviews, he was bringing out information that that he absolutely knew was not fed to her. the color clothes that she was wearing, the position of the clothes. Interesting Many times as the interviews progressed, Chris Tack claimed to know nothing about the clothes Angie Dodge was wearing. Universities cloned that cloned . But some details in the interview could be interpreted to back up claims by the police. Once, for example Before Tab was shown the crime scene photos He did seem to in a guessing kind of way Kn what Angie was wearing inh of cross my mind that us to swear And although he's wrong about the color of her clothes After being asked many times if her clothes were half on or half off or pulled up or pushed down He does correctly say this about her pants There sl that I h on I m Also, said the detectives, Chris talked about Ben Hobbs hitting Angie behind the ear And we have the evidence to back it. We have bruising where he says that Ben hit her. So detectives insisted they were right Ben Hobbs was the ringleader. Chris Tpe was involved. and an unknown third man left the DNA in the form of semen. But as we talk to the mayor and the detective We knew And they knew the victim's mother, Carool Dodge believed Taap was innocent and they detectives had made a terrible mistake What's it like to know that Carol is now Dly campaigning for his release. belieelieves in an innocent man. I think that's part of the process. Her heart has been broken. and she's convinced you got the wrong guy. When I heard that, I was She was genuinely surprised. She's looking for closure. Tomorrow or the next day, Chris could be guilty in her mind again. Really? Hello there. Anyway, perhaps this, we decided, would be a good time to talk to the man in the middle of it all, the serial conffessor, Christopher Taap Now to see It comes to time in every tale to meet the person at the center of the story. Here he is Christopher Taap No longer the aimless pothead you've seen on those videotapes from nineteen ninety seven At the time of this interview in twenty twelve, he was a man of thirty five who'd done more than a decade of hard time as people Look at you. What do you most want them to know about you 've been so wronged all these years G individuals do something another human being like they've done to me. You're an innocent man? Yes sir I am Of course everybody in prison is innocent, right? If you look at the Hntire case, the DNA, none of them points to me, none of them On that point, there is little dispute, of course But how did Chris Taap get here? That's a familiar story to many families The sweet little boy shown in all these pictures of a typical childhood started smoking marijuana, the thirteen Then at sixteen turned to meth. Chris dropped out of high school hanging out down by the river in Idaho Falls with all those kids his mother warned him about That he said is how his name came up after the murder of Angie Dodge Did you think anything of that? No I had no rhyme, no reason to be scared Until you recall January of nineteen ninety seven. when Taap was brought in for questioning after his friend Ben Hobbs was arrested for a Nevada sexual attack, which police said was similar to the murder of Angie Dodge D didn't know what I was being brought in for didnn't connect with the angie thing at all. No. I thought I was honestly, I was going for for drugs. And as you've seen over the course of several weeks Christopher Tapp soon went from saying he knew nothing about Angie Dodgge's murder to being the only man charged in the case Well, of course, one of the difficulties was your story It kept changing, right? Very much it did I mean, you went from saying I don't don't know anything about this. to then say, well, maybe Ben had something to do with it So then well maybe there's a third guy involved to Wait a minute, I was there. And oh, yeah, and I cut her. Where did that come from? Trying to give them what they wanted to hear. J to appease them. Wait a minute, but why would you say you cut her? Because during that time mister Fman, he said, hypothetically, even if you did cut her, it still ain't gonna matter. We'll be able to help you. You just need to help us And indeed, here it is on tape with then detective turned mayayor Jared Furban in charge of the interview Hypothetically, if Chris Taap was holding on to Angie as she was being cut and some of those stuff was going on, if Chris Taap took part in the knife in any way, shape or form in cutting her, okay, but I didn't Would you listen us? Okay Hypothetically it Okay. If you took part in any of that, that's okay. Because you're still here, you're still showing some good faith that you want to cooperate. Do you believe that story? Hooklang and Sinker. Try to put yourself there right now and tell me what was going on inside your stomach and your brain. S. trying to figure out what they want just for them to leave me alone. Why? I didn't I didn't kill nobody. I was never there the night the murder happened. They just kept focusing on. Well, if you was there, if you did do it, if you held a knife, it's okay. We'll help you. So like an idiot, I believe them. And then they charge you with murder. Yeah As we spoke here back in twenty twelve, Chris Tapp was fighting to clear his name with the support of the Idaho Innocence Project The victim's mother Carol Dodge came around To your side What was that like? It's an amazing feeling, and I appreciate her finally understanding God I'm innocent Carol, of course, despite this turnabout and new mission in life, was still stuck in her grief. And by the time our first report on this case aired in twenty twelve More than sixteen years after the murder of Angie Dodge Those river kids, Grist Tap's friends, had tried to move on as well, but couldn't. Rust Baldwin had bounced around the country from coast to coast with Only occasional visits back to Idaho Falls. It just feels like every time I go there, I need to watch my step That's why I can't live her Jeremy Sargis, wrongly accused by his friend Chris of taking part in the murder gone into a kind of exile, five hundred miles from Idaho Falls. Mice. friendriends, my support group had kind of disbanded and It was kind of alone. But your family was there, That's your home, you grew up there. How was it like having to leave and try to find a new life somewhere else It is scary. My family has a businessiness and ' been there for over a hundred years and I always felt like I had a path a career and stuff like that kind of takes its toll on me a little bit too The rookie cop who'd mananned the door at the murder scene Bill Squires who's now a sergeant and still convinced that Chris Tapp's confession and conviction were righteous, as they say You would just never expect somebody to confess to something repeatedly that they didn't do. 's no dout We've got a suspect here and they're admitting this. Why would we do anything differently Garald Dodge, of course, could think of a lot of reasons to do something differently was convinced those detectives had blown the case completely. and had browbeaten an innocent man into a false confession She needed help now And so she looked and looked until she found H A man who might make all the difference My phone r And I picked up the phone and I almost fell out of my chair Carool Dodge had to look a long way from Idaho Falls to find the ones she needed The one who could help her convince the police there was something very wrong with the Chris Tapp conviction She looked all the way to Chicago, in fact Wh she found He is Steve Drzzen Clinical professor of laaw at Northwestern University Legal director of the Center on Wongful Convictions and One of the world's leading experts on the phenomenon of False confessions When that dateline program about the case aired Drizon had been watching. I had seen the date line show so I was aware of who Carol Dodge was and my phone rank. And I picked up the phone and The woman on the other end of the line was Carol Dodge. And I almost fell out of my chair. It's hard to get your head around that in a way,n't that It is extremely unusual that a victim's family member would reach out to me When he Watch those hours and hours of Chris Taap's interrogation tapes. Well, this was The wororst example of police contamination feed't suggesting a story that I have ever seen in all my years at looking in these cases Chris was trying in a sense to come up with a story would Please the polygraph machine If you could tell a story that would show that he will telling the truth according to the polygraph, he would get the benefit of an immunity deal. Why would he get that idea? Because that's what the law enforcement officers told them It was all a ruse Well, now that would shake things up, thought Chris Taappps public defefender, John Thomas n't it So with that, You know, world leading false confession expert Did the police attitude begin to change Not really, it just fell on deaf ears. So Drizzen got the National Innocence project involved And while progress was not immediate, thingsings began to happen For one thing This woman was having a change of heart Remember Destiny Osborne One of the river kids So that little knot of uncomfortable stuff was working away. a little knock. a big knot not in her stomach Beuse Destiny who testified at Tap's trial and told the jury that she had heard him confess to the crime gathered up her courage and told Angie's mom Carol, that police had pressured her to lie and that she hadn't heard Chris Tap confess at all What did that feel like Fally come clete It was great I mean, she was in shock. And I'm just like, I lied, it was all a lie. like yeah. so No my Destiny had been in trouble when police approached her after the murder She was in juvenile custody at the time id they suggest what might happen to you if you didn't cooperate with them Oh yeah, they pretty much told me you can either come meet with us today or you can just go right to the bigig jail Then the police fed her a story, she said. and made her rehearse it I was literally told things that weren't and I like knew they weren't true, but for some reason, when someone's telling you like they're true and that you know, you're lying, you kind of maybe start to think that you're the crazy one. I think the common expression they use on the street is Well, that's what I was going to say, but I chose to to keep it a little bit appropriate The city of Idaho Fall's lawyer said that In Destiny's diarrhea a year after the murder and during a police interview six years after that She repeated the story she told in court Desty told us it all stemed from what police told her to say. What stopped you from coming forward to say that was all BS? How do you undo that without being charged with perjury yourself? and I ended up and a situation for probably like good, fifteen years after that that prevented me from really doing much even leaving my house, so But the fabric of Tap's conviction was fraying at the seams The prosecutors decided to make him an offer Plead guilty to murder and be resentenced to Time serred. In other words, Admit to something he said he didn't do and remain a felon for the rest of his life. Get out of prison Do you remember what you thought about that I was kind of torn. He hadd spent twenty years in prison. That's a reasonable sentence to have to Whatver us torn between that and that Why are we letting him out of prison when we know that he's guilty? It was march twenty seventeen When Christopher Taap along with defense attorney John Thomas appeared in court to take the deal The room went silent. And Angie Dodgeer's mother, Carol took the witness stand I can't imagine. Yeah Noning what we don't know that anyone can convict Someone that there's no DNA And before long, the legal details were done And the courtroom exploded in celebration as a deputy removed Chris Ta's handcuffs for the last time, and he was engulfed in the arms of Carol Dodge Along with Tap's mother, Vera, was Jeremy Sargis, that once close friend of Chris's about whom Tappit lied to police about being at the crime scene scene of the murder. A man who once said he hated Chris I cried. You felt pretty bad about He' still the same Chris been through some rough stuff. Yeah. Did he apologize to you? Multiple times. Yeahah. You felt pretty pretty bad about that He does. which you should shouldn't have done that It's al right. We're only halfway done with life, so we got the good half now.. Yes, Fate raarely what anyone expects Chris Top said he wanted to find the real killer now And so did this man The new chief of the Idaho Falls pololice Bryce Johnson For me and this is going to sound little h. For me, I wanted to make Chris Taap irrelevant to the investigation we were doing. The reality was we had a DNA sample that didn't belong to him. We wanted to find out who left that DNA sample And so that's what the entire focus was was finding that person. Since the original investigation, Detective Ken Brown had retired Detective turned mayor Jared Furrman. had developed Alzheimer's and withdrawn from public life So deleed The reinvigorated investigation The new chief promoted Bill Squires. to Detective Captain. It was Squires remember who worked the door at the original crime scene more than twenty years before. My guidance for our staff was always, let's look at this completely differently again with the eyes that we have now and the technology we have now Sfires didn't know it yet, but a woman known to be at the leading edge of that technology had been approached to work on the case And her first thought My first assessment of this case was that it was not viable for investigative genetic genealogy But of course, CC Moore had yet to encounter Carot Dodd Chris Tab had a lot to get used to The worldor was a very different place. As was Idaho Falls. What it feel like to walk out of Prison free man in twenty seventeen I felt like to walk was overwhelming Tuly, truly overwhelming. I had a panic attack, you know, the first time I went shopping I had to run out of this door because I couldn't handle it all. There was so much N never had choices before. And so he made up for lost time Got a factory job inspecting potato sacks and he got married. which made him both a husband and stepfather to a couple of kids Meanwhile, that very spring, the Idaho Falls pololice kept looking for the man who'd left DNA on the body of Angie Dodge in nineteen ninety six The DNA technology company called Parabond Labs had made this sketch what that man might look like based on genetic material left at the scene And then Paribon made an offer of the new man in charge of the murder investigation. Bill Squires Paraban said, hey, you know, by the way, we've got some hours that we have available to commit to this. Would you be interested in doing that? It was easy for me to say, yes, absolutely. let's do this cooperatively and see where it goes No matter the cost, full steam ahead Under that kind of priority, Parabon asked the head of its law enforcement unit to join in. The world's most celebrated genetic genealogist, Cei Moore Pioneer in the field osed hundreds of cold cases like Angie's. But this case There was a problem. It was highly degraded DNA. So we were missing about forty percent of the genetic markers that we need for investigative genetic genealogy. In fact, when your services were first requested Didn't you turn it down? So my first assessment of this case was that it was not viable for investigative genetic genealogy Pan Guess who Carol Dodge, Angie's mom, intervened again begging CC to get involved and sending her the crime scene photos which changed everything It made me just ill and very, very, very angry seen what had been done Angie. Not the sort of thing you can get out of your mind opened up out of respect for Carol because I thought if she had to look at what had been done to her daughter, I should be able to. do that as well justust really impact on me and made me even more determined to find a way to help Cherl and hope Idaho Falls Police Department B big challenge. certainly was. and the first time that we were trying to use genetic genealogy on a sample that was that degraded So how' you go about that what I always do is just building trees. Family trees, that is Somebody who'd sent a sample to America's vast body of voluntarily shared DNA also shared a marker or two with the suspect Some distant relations. The trick was to figure out who The idea is to build trees and find commonalities between the people who are sharing DNA with the unknown suspect You find common ancestors And once I am able to do that, I know there's promise. I know I'm going in the right direction And so I just started building trees And despite her initial pessimism, Ci Moore began to come up with some answers All connected to a family with the name of Usreri Tell me what it was like what you thought, at least, when you first got a name from CCBR Oh my gosh. We were so excited. I can't even tell you. There was potentially six males that could match this based on their age. and One of them happened to live in Idaho and had lived in Idaho the whole time Five of them were eventually ruled out One person lived only a couple of hours from Idaho Falls in Twin Falls But how to get a DNA sample without spooking him Could this person be your suspect Yeah, you absolutely could be. Could he not be Yeah, that's possible too. So do you go down there and just knock on his door? or do you go down and try to collect a sample without him knowing in a legal manner that doesn't compromise the investigation in case that's not your person. And finally just came to the conclusion, lookook, we're going to try to do this clandestinely and try to get this sample withithout him knowing. because I am not going to be the person that compromises this investigation once we've gotten to this point. So we're just not going to leave anything to chance The usual methods, grabbing a cigarette but or a glass from a restaurant didn't work. So police got creative when they noticed the man was driving a car with expired license plates The officer pulled him over and so why they had the subject stop, they asked him, hey, would you This officers' in training, would you mind giving us a breath sample just so he can get the practice of running this machine. You don't even have to get out of your car And He's like, Of course, yeah, no problem. And we collected two breath samples in those breath tubes on the Alka sensor device And that gave us the DNA sample But when the results came back from the lab No match. Well, huge disappointment That one hit us hard. We really thought we were on the right track And uh really forced us all to go back to the drawing board. All including CC Moore He had to be in there somewhere. He had to. Genetic genealogy had never led me wrong I was beating my head against the wall But as Moo went back through the Usriy familyily trees All the names, the connections. Something struck her There could always be an adoption, son who's been born to a man and he doesn't know about it Soould there be someone missing There had to be a missing lake CC Moo had found the family with its six men who had to be closely related to the person who left DNA at the crime scene the Usri family be another male Usre But there were no more Usreies Alas When I went back to the drawing board I again focused on that and said, is somebody missing here Families can be complicated seecrets affairs or brief for abandoned marriages Sometimes kids are the result. So My colleague started calling around And she called this very smallall local library in a small town. where this family had been based initially. and some Seet librarian agreed to go through their archives Where he found an obituary for a woman who The Oed revealed had a daughter and the daughter had been married to a man named Assri, except That was no longer the daughter's last name So she had obviously remarried And she had one son The son who had usy DNA took on the name of his stepfather which explained why he had been so hard to find. So tell me what it's like to discover that It was an amazing moment because finally, All the pieces started falling in place We learned he actually lived in Idaho Falls in nineteen ninety six And when Moore dropped all this knowledge of the Idaho Falls pololice It was very hard. not to break into Cheers telling them I don't know if we would have ever found him. I really don't without them finding it The spectrum who had eluded all efforts to identify him for decades Now, apparently Maybe H a name So what was the name Dps, Brian Drips Brian drips And lo and behold, it was a name that had come up right after the murder Back in nineteen ninety six. Detective Captain John Marley his name was had been listed in there as a neighbor that had lived across the street Detective Lieutenant Sage J Albright. So this neighbor, he said that he had been drinking heavily that night, couldouldn't remember where he had been or what he had been doing and Bically couldn't account for anything that had happened on the night that Angie was murdered. Was there a DNA sample for this fem? No No DNA test For a neighbor with no alibi Why the heck was that? He had left the area shortly after that. He had moved to another state and as far as we know, had never returned to the Attle Falls area. That excuse Not really Now retired detective Jeff Pratt, the man who from the start thought DNA would solve the case was really quite unnerving, you know to think that we were that close and should have been doing that work, you know. It's investigating one hundred one It is Now clearly the priority was to get a sample of DNA from this drips character This man Right here t the time all this was going down, Brian Drips was fifty three years old The next Marine and father of three We now live three hundred miles from Idaho Falls in a town called Coldwell just west of Boise So those detectives deccaamped to Coldwell could not have had a more motivated staff. We're going to go solve murder. We're gonna solve a twenty five year old murder And on may tenth, twenty nineteen, just a month shy of twenty three years since the murder of Angie Dodge And after days and nights of surveillance They watched Brian Drips flick a cigarette butt from his car Three of us were on that cigarette butt so fast that would make your head spin. We didn't care whether a car was gonna take us out or not Off it went to the Idaho State Crime Lab. And the very next day a call from his liieutenant And geez, I almost want to tear up. I'm trying to keep it calm and collected here. When he called me, He said, I just got a call from the lab It sound Those are the words And hung up the phone with him and I remember just going, why Gosh This is Huge. what this means for the family and what this means for our city case. Iran from the very beginning Trolan. getting the results finally all those years later So what do you do about that? You gott to go arst they, hh We do Four days later Brian Drips was led into an interview room. Well, what questions you have for us today? Odd that the suspect himself brought up the crime whatever remember that night was Iraight of ath Okay. But of course, it wasn't He claimed she didn't know a thing Except for what he'd seen watching Dline There is that data Four hours Drips kept denying that he killed Angie Dodge And then So you would just be completely shocked if we had your DNA at the scene We have your DNA at the scene That's why we're here At that moment specifically, he wanted to take another break took him out of the interview room. brought him out to the balcony so that he could smoke And that's when he told us that He didn't You didn't mean to kill her And then back inside, it all spilled out. And just like that The Murder of Angie Dodge with solve But there was one more big task for Brian Drips. too convince detectives that the other man who confessed to the crime and still had a conviction on his record. That is Chris Taap was truly innocent If you were trying to convince us that nobody else was there, how would you do that? But before detectives were finished interrogating now confessed killer Brian Drips, They had to put one huge issue to rest. Drips commit the crime alone or with someone else say Christopher Tack D someone go with you over there S If you're trying to take the blame and there was other people involved The answers seemed clear So for Bran. This point, it's our obligation frrankly, I was a bit surprised. Really, I believe that We were going to find out that he had some relationship with Chris Tapp. Did you realize that whole time that they still thought you were a guilty man I gott to watch D of Falls Police Department detectives try to lead that man down a path towards me and he He did what was right. He finally did what was the complete total truth and said he acted alone and I had nothing to do with it. It must have been a nerve wracking experience to start watching this guy not knowing what he was going to sayactly It was rough because again, at the end of the day to save himself. He might have been like, well, hey, yeah, I know Christopher Tapp, but thankful he was finally, you know, mad enough to admit what he did wrong. I'm appreciative for him finally being truthful. And just like that The long black cloud of suspicion that had hung over Christopher Taap and his river kid friends for all those years vanished life was suddenly like sun after rain. Chris called me when the arrest had been made and said they got him, Jer They frrein got him The guy was right across the street. Right there Maybe they didn't have enough Q tips to do DNA to the neighbors or something. I just, I don't know . Pretty bad, please, work But that was for another day For now Today, we're here to announce that we have arrested Brian Ligh Drips for the murder and rape of Angie Dodge Idaho Falls Police Chief Bryce Johnson made the announcement along with the woman without whom the crime might never have been solved Angie's mother, Carol Dodge I can't even get surprressed How hard this journey has been And the hundreds of people that's been affected by My person's choice to take my daughter's life Including, of course, the man who'd spent more than two decades in prison after confessing falsely that he killed Angie Chris tap I got asked the question, do you owe Chris Tapp an apology? But we hadn't done that follow up investigation yet to verify what Dps has said. So I kind of said at the time that, hey, right now we're here to talk about drips and the day will come in which we need to talk about Chris Tapp. It was two months later in july twenty nineteen when in the words of the police chief Chris Tap finally got his day You nervous about this Yes Very ignorant We rode with Chris to the courthouse What was potentially the day of his exxoneration. If the judge signed off, walk in the states in, you know, agreemence with, you know, my actual innocence Everything else, but the judge click. Maybe I don't ag Where do we go from there? Well, we're about to find out. We are At his attorney's office Chris Tapp was greeted by many of his oldest friends, those river kids, wearing t shirts bearing a message they'd repeated ever since the start Innocent We told you so They all marched with Chris to the courthouse, a block away Those present, included Jeremy Russ, A George from my perspective All of those white t shirts walking into that courtthouse was middle fingers in the air We told you so Here's what happened when Chris walked into the courtroom Harro Dodge was there, of course. Allise. The prosecution went first. In my view, there's clear and convincing evidence that the defendant was convicted of a crime for which he did not commit. Based upon that, we're going to move to dis to vacate the jury verdict and move to dismiss that case Dodge Andngie's brother sppoke for the family. this day I think is a day of healing for all of us It was then time for Chris to speak Thankful. that I've been given this second chance of life Thankful to Carol Dodge, Brent Dodge, the Dodge family for continuing to push forward. believing in me, when they actually saw the truth, I am so grateful and humble to be their friend. And then finally, the judge So I am going to grant the state's motion to dismiss both the rape conviction and the murder conviction on the basis of actual innocence of mister Tapp. As far as this court is concerned You are innocent of the convictions that you've been living under for the past twenty plus years So I don't think any of us can really put ourselves in your place. But I'm just glad that that can be corrected at this time. And we're off the record in this matter It was finished. Chris Taap had become, according to the Innocence Project, the first person in the world to be exonerated by genetic genealogy. If our story ended here that ending might be a happy one But it doesn't end here And this ending Well It's more Greek tragedy than anything else. I dont know if there's a way to make sense of this to Nearly a quarter century to the day, after he raped and murdered Angie Dodge, Brian Drippps shuffled into a courtroom in Idaho Falls He've cut a deal. pleaded guilty This was sentencing day It' probably one twenty five years of pure heel brander sho putes through Carool Dodge told us she was too torn up to sit down with us for a final interview about her struggle to get justice for her daughter, Angie But in court She did not hold back You brand drips Do you serve eternal help You better look up at me is still looking at that table. We have to have goone through twenty five years of pure hell. trying to find justice We're looking for you Before a sentence was pronounced, Drips spoke to the Dodge family I'm sorry I know you're never forive anything V so The judge sentenced Drippps to life in prison. He must serve twenty years before he's eligible for parole in twenty thirty nine When he will be seventy three years old Nothing else The two original lead detectives charged with finding Adgie Dodge's killer We're not in court that day Ken Brown, who's retired respond to our questions about Chris Tapp's exoneration or about the failure to collect Dp's DNA Jared Furman, the former mayor. died from Alzheimer's a year after Drips was sent to prison He was sixty years old As for the fully exonerated, actually innocent Chris Tap What word would he use to describe himself after all he's been through been a little lucky Lucky enough that you guys picked up the case, lucky enough that, you know, the Dodge family started to believe in my innocence. So again, I take it as luck It's really amazing, isn't it? mean you were a pariah You were that that drug addidled bad kid from the riverbank Oh who with his bad friends did this terrible thing It was nice for people to finally see the truth. If it wasn't for this show through all this bad luck I guess I'd probably still be sitting in, you know, an eight by ten cell right now And once he was out, Chris Tapp became a bit of an activist It is my honor to be here today. In twenty twenty one, he watched as Idaho's governor signed a law providing compensation for the wrongfully convicted. The law provided Chris more than a million dollars He lobbied for similar laws in other states. And he filed a lawsuit against the city of Idaho Falls and its police department Chris settled it for an apology from City Hall and eleven point seven million dollars Still It doesn't take away my father passing away while I was inside. It doesn't take away the chance that I had the ability to have my own children They stole that away from me. So I just don't see how it's fair for them to walk away completely clean I have to live this nightmare Well Ch I had talked to Chris Offen through the years foundound him rather Sweet The kid who loved his mother and his old friends And for whom There might finally be a storybook ending But no This wasn't that kind of story marriage after his release. didn't work out. And then in august twenty twenty three, as he and his wife, Stacy were in the middle of their divorce She went for a ride in her new Corvette. and was killed in a wreck It Hurst that I know she won't be here for her kids or her family. And honest truth, you know I'll never get the closure I wanted with her either And it hurts This conversation was one month later in Chris's new home september twenty twenty three All right done. And then the interview was over. It's been nice talking to you all these years And it's been amazing Keith. I mean, likeike I said Here we are eleven years later. Wh would have thk it An interview that ended with Tap making a vow. It's nice to see it to its conclusion Me too. because this is my last one I will never not this is my last interview. I will never talk about the Edgie Dodge case again And so we packed up our cameras not thinking much of it Assuming that's just something Chris said, something we all say from time to time doneone with that, never again. Only this time Six weeks later Chris was visiting Las Vegas overnight for a car show So what I had heard happened is that he was in his hotel room in Las Vegas and he was walking through the suite and tripped and fell and hit his head on the coffee table He was rushed to the hospital with serious head injuries And a week later, Nate Eaton, newews director of the East Idaho News heard his phone It was a Sunday night when I got a text message saying, Have you heard that Chris tapp died And I said to my wife Chrisab died and she's like, what? was true Chris Taap was forty seven years old. Days later, Carool and Destiny sat side by side as Tap shocked family and friends gathered in Idaho Falls for his funeral Chris's life being cut short is the exact opposite of what anyone expected from Chris Chris had ideas of what he was going to do for the rest of forever I love him very much and I miss him very much All his old closest friends are hurting really bad I And then january twenty twenty four likeike a bolt from the blue This from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department throughrough the course of the suspicious death investigation LVMPD homicide detectives have learned Tap was in an altercation inside a room at a resort before being located and transported to the hospital The Clark County Coroner's Office has since ruled Tapp's death a homicide as a result of blunt force trauma to the head In March of twenty twenty four Daniel Rodimer, a former professional wrestler. was charged with murdering Chris Tapp During a party at the resort Rodimer pleaded not guilty. and is awaiting trial I don't know if there's a way to make sense of this It's just so. incomprehensible One day, years ago We encountered a grieving mother who was trying to do something we had never heard of before Free the man convicted of killing her daughter. And she This force of nature against all odds that seemed insurmountable succeeded But life and history are stubbornly unmoldable and weren't finished yet With the story of the Rriver kid Christopher Taap That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt Thanks for joining us.